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An extraordinairy life: Moving outside the box... wait why should I ?

This post has been edited 4 time(s), it was last edited by Wolfske: 01.10.2013 19:52.

Hi there I'm wolfske and inspired by schnitzelfisch and succesfull people (and pokerplayers) I'm starting this blog !

Who am I ?

I am a 23 year old guy from Belgium. My hobbies are offcourse poker, a little bit of cooking and fitness. I have a bachelor degree in social work and a masters degree in educational studies. At this moment I also have a job and I'm very happy with it. It's not hard work, I have the most amazing collegues and there are opportunities to grow to higher levels.

I often stay in my comfort zone at home and just do these hobbies. Most of my social interactions are at work and at the gym. So that's not how I want my life to be obviously. I want to live an extraordinairy life

I've already failed several times at reorganising my life. I never got further than good intentions so it's time to act now.

What are my goals ?

Well I want to live an awesome and especially extraordinairy life.

First of all I want to be more social. Whenever I'm not working or doing a hobby I want to do something exciting as going away with friends, going to party's , doing crazy stuff. I also want to be a very positive person. Atm I am a very stressfull often depressed person who basically looks like a social and very happy person to the outside, but really isn't.

I want to be great at poker. At this moment I'm playing staked for Donbartos. I'm getting coaching in a group twice a week and I think I'm doing a good job in improving. Longterm goal here is to be awesome at poker and play on the mid and high stakes. I want to reach the point where I could easily be a professional if I wanted to be. So I need to follow coaching and do more reviews.

Fitness goals: Well I don't have good genetics for doing fitness stuff, but I also don't have good excuses not to do fitness stuff. I'm doing it for 5 years with little succes. I've gained a lot of respect for my effort though but lately people are worrying why I don't go to the gym that often... I started with some HIIT to do at home because my motivation is really low. Still this HIIT will not give me the muscle I want in the longterm.
--> start eating perfect again and start doing HIIT combined with gym (twice a week)

Have a carreer. I want to have a awesome job and I like to be one of the best at it. I'm making good progress at my current job but I think I should be able to do a lot more. So atm I want to become better at it and in the future I want to get a new contract and after that I want to make some sort of a promotion (or get more tasks)

What are my tools ?

Well I read some stuff of schnitzelfisch and I plan on starting to read some books. But I don't know where to start so I hope I can get some responses here and I also contacted Schnitzelfisch for some tips for beginners. I think I may take a coaching from him in the future.

I hope when I read this in a couple of months I will laugh because I made progress and my life is more often. I also hope to get a lot of motivation from you guys or at least a little sincere response.

So one day I was walking on the street and I noticed this guy. He seemed like a very happy guy he smiled at me as I passed through. The guy also seemed fit and really seemed to enjoy his day.

Days later I met him more and more. I am kind of a shy guy but one day he came to me and we talked. It was a nice talk. I learned he also loves poker and he’s pretty good at it. I hope to play on the same stakes as him someday and become a MTT specialist myself. He also told me about his awesome weekend. He went to a great party and said I should join him next time because it was really fun. I also kinda noticed he had a nice physique. He was pretty muscular and looked very healthy.

So next weekend I decided to meet up with him at a party. I had an OK time but not great. I felt the urge to get drunk so I could be more social to strangers. I stopped doing that …so my party wasn‘t that awesome. My new friend didn’t seem to have those problems. He didn’t consume alcohol but talked to a lot of his friends and also strangers. He was having an awesome time. At the party he was telling some cool stories about travels he made. It was unbelievable.

As time progressed we became good friends. We didn’t have a lot of quantity time because he was always going on new adventures and stuff. But when I needed him he was always there. He always had nice stories to tell. When we would get an argument we would easily settle and he didn’t have the urge to win. He respected my opinion as I did respect his.

As I learned to know him better he told me about his job. It was a job wich wasn’t to demanding but was really satisfactory and because of his job and poker winnings he really earned some money wich made him able to do the activities he wanted to do so he never had to worry about the money. He was also thinking about making his own cooperation and maybe quitting his job. But he wasn’t sure on that yet. He had some nice plans though and because of his social behaviour a lot of connections to help him achieving this.

Well one day he told me to meet him at a fun fair. The weirdest thing happened. Nobody was at the fun fair and it gave me the chills. Well we were supposed to meet up at a place with funny mirrors .. But I didn’t see him anywhere. This wasn’t his habit. Maybe he was inside the tent. So I went inside and I only saw one mirror in this tent … on top of the mirror it said : ‘future you’. I looked into the mirror and there was my friend.

So as the day is almost anded I'd figure that on this first day of the rest of my life I would make a little recap to see if I was productive or not or if I was talking BS.

- I started waking up clueless about the rest of the day at 10.00
- Grabbed some food to eat
- Went to my computer
- Suddenly got this crazy idea and went for it (wich is something I'd normally wouldn't do even though I started realising for a while now I should start acting more and thinking less)

So after this great moment what did I do ?

- Contacted Schnitzelfisch about how I should start (thanks for you help ! )
- Made this blog and searched some motivational pictures
- I wrote my vision statement in what I'd like to believe to be a creative style
- Ordered the books schnitzelfisch advised me
- Made my week schedule to guide my in my new lfe
- Downloaded the pomodoro app
- Did a 180mans review over a long period of time + bought holdem recources calculator and used my skype group to discuss hand.
- Then I felt like cookiing (one of my new hobbies) so I made spaghetti with onion, garlic, Rucola (rocket salad), basil, chicken breast,a little bit of fillet de york (I like the salty taste, reminds me of bacon) and pine seeds
- After that I started playing poker , regged about 33 games and lost $30 wich is fine because I should not try to control stuff I can't
- After this I started texting some friends for next week. Plans have already changes as I'm going out next wednesday with a friend (girl) and I asked her to take along other friends .. (totally out of my comfort zone for a moment but hey doesn't matter)
- Watched some TED movies, learned some nice stuff, also made notes.
(Topics: Body language, Vulnerability, Succes and staying succesfull, why I would fail at having a great carreer = awesome btw , winning vs succeeding, being wrong=also awesome, hidden power of smiling, 30 day challenge)
- Feeling my eyes getting tired so about to relax maybe eat a little meal and get ready to fall asleep.

This was the meal I cooked btw:

Maybe I could still work on my presentation a little but I loved the taste !

What I didn't do well:
Skype destracted me while playing poker
Cellphone destracted me while watching TED
I was worried about a football match (my favourite team had to play my least favourite team .. I didn't watch and reviewed my game but in my pomodoro 5 min breaks I watched the scores .. we won hoorray)

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Wolfske: 06.05.2013 06:39.

-Woke up at 7 succes ! Feel pretty good .. normally on late working days I'd wake up at 10-11 so drastic change over here !

-Eating succes ! Ate some oatmeal with water and some protein shake

- Suddenly I came to realise I was not ready for exercise with food on my stomach so i switchted it with the productivity
--> read in schnitzelfisch's untill the sleeping part. Took some notes of stuff I may want to do in the future:
* Drink more water
* Drink less coffee
* 15 min morning jog
* optimalisation of 5 min poker breaks
* making lists of tasks and order them (not sure yet if I'm going to do this)
* When going on tilt : Walk, Stretching, Deep breathing, throw ball against wall, visualising A game
* Powernapping (can't sleep at work though don't know how I will make this work, maybe short nap after or before work or something)

- Now it's time to exercise, I will do a high intensity interval training and take a shower afterwards !

I will have more time then I thought so I probably am going to watch some more TED video's and also read some stuff on the internet. If I don't know what stuff to read I will simply review a poker game or do something usefull ! (or maybe a powernap )

Ok did everything on the list untill eating after work ... even had more time than expected so went to work with my bike
felt good ... had a lot of energy .. untill about 15-16:00 .. I crashed. I was so tired pfff.
Couldn't focus .. did my job it was pretty calm again but normally I would study new stuff .. didn't do much of that today so not really happy with that.

The travel home woke me up a little but now again soooo tired .. But I guess it's to late now to take a power nap and I really want to do my whole list before I go to sleep

Not sure what to do now .. well it's a new rythm so I guess being tired is normal right now
Guess I'll play 20 x 45mans now instead of 180s so my session is a bit shorter.

Probably going to watch one TED movie afterwards and then go to sleep.

This video is awesome ! It really made me think about me life. It makes you see that even small things are really important.
My quest of being succesful or leading an extraordinairy life is also one of having a great mindset of seeing positive things and appreciating everything !
I could do the most awesome stuff but it wouldn't mean anything if I wouldn't appreciate it right?

It's also appreciating about what I have now already... and all the unlimited possibilities. It's about taking small steps whatever happens and seeing the good in life while you live it !

Originally posted by Wolfske
This video is awesome ! It really made me think about me life. It makes you see that even small things are really important.
My quest of being succesful or leading an extraordinairy life is also one of having a great mindset of seeing positive things and appreciating everything !
I could do the most awesome stuff but it wouldn't mean anything if I wouldn't appreciate it right?

It's also appreciating about what I have now already... and all the unlimited possibilities. It's about taking small steps whatever happens and seeing the good in life while you live it !

Ok so summary about the day ...
Well to say it short .. I kinda feel like I fell flat on my face.

Waking up went pretty bad .. I did wake up, didn't go back to bed even though I really wanted to. Then I wasn't hungry so watched some TED movies instead.

Then I was late for eating, then I was late for exercise and could only do half of it. Arrived at time for work though, did some usefull stuff but still needs to improve. Then it started to run and I really didn't feel going to the gym (also forgot my shoes to workout) So went home because (and this is good news) my books arrived !

But instead of eating or reading or playing poker I watched TV for an hour without really planning to do it ... Wich was a waste of time ...

So still going to read now, also going to make notes and really study this book. Will use the pomodoro app for this ... But still .. I feel like I failed.

Still it was better than regular days and making a habit takes time I guess .. I also like to focus on the positive stuff. When I was waiting on the train I normally would walk a bit nervous. But this time I sat down on the ground, pointed my body and face to the sun and started relaxing and focussing on how nice the sun felt on my skin .. It was such a small thing and it felt really amazing !

So didn't fail at all the things, just at a part. Succes is standing up once more than you fell down so back to work !

Waking up went pretty good even though I had a terrible night sleep again ! Guess I still need to get in the right rythm.

Read my book , called with the eldery home so I could make an appointment for an activity we want to do with collegues (we're going to volunteer as activity of our 'team day' ), then ate , then read some more ... won't do my interval training today because I have a huge blister on my foot but I will go to the gym later this evening so I still have some exercise... Now I have 1 hour left before I get of to work so I guess I'm going to watch some poker videos since I don't have time to play right now.

Also this evening I probably go out with a friend who will take at least one of her friends along .. maybe even more so a bit of a step in the dark for me but I like it
Small problem: her friend was planning to go to a birthdayparty of one of her collegues ... So we'll see how it turns out !

Of to the video now ! busy busy busy !
(btw downloaded evernote on my HTC , I love it .. I'm searching for an easy way to clear my memory and I think I may have found it
)

Ok so my friend cancelled, we'll do something saterday instead. Tomorrow it's the final of the belgian cup in football so I'll go with a friend and watch that match on a big screen in the city who's footballteam is in the final ... should be fun !

Think I'll play some poker in a few moment.
Will go to the gym tomorrow. Don't feel like going right now (wich is not a good sign, I know
)

Awesome day !
Man went to sleep @ 00:30 and woke up at 7:00 ... I felt sick, I had some problems with my bowels (yeah you know what I mean) ... still woke up and went ... right to the toilet .. duuh what did you expect ?

Then I went and read my book .. it just keeps getting more awesome .. just read the first habit wich is proactivity and it's so logical when you read it .. just found a million life leaks .. probably also my biggest one. They are even in this blog :

I didn't feel like going to the gym

My foot hurts

It was raining and didn't feel like driving

So even though I was sick I figured that the proactive reaction would be to analyse the situation (me being sick vs benefits of training) and make a decision based on facts, not feelings.
Disadvantage : Feel sick, need to be better for work tomorrow, feel tired also
Advantage: It will give me motivation, I can show I have character to myself, ...
And also ... I can choose how hard I train .. don't have to go all out if I'm sick (I don't believe that would be efficient) so I just went and did one of my best trainings of the year ... I felt great !

Saw a friend of mine, told him about the book, told him most important stuff I read because I know he could use this knowledge. I think what I did here is one of the future habits I didn't read yet because I feel like I really helped him. I could have been embarrassed because I'm suddenly doing this productivity stuff so passionatly .. Even i think it's a little weird .. but still I believe to do the right thing and it feels right because it's just who I am !

Just wanted to share this and want to promote everyone to read the 7 habit of highly effective reading (unless you play the 180mans, than don't read it and donate your money to future me [
] )

Uuugh terrible day, after the football game yesteray went to sleep at 3.00 woke up @ 10 , felt very tired, did nothing went to work ... almost no work, did nothing ... came home still doing nothing ... better read my book in a few moment ..

So woke up at 8 today ... felt very tired because again I stayed up late .. (did some productive stuff yesterday late)

I felt a little bit to tired to read so I thought I just was going to watch a video. It was a video of Jared Tendler's seminar a few days ago ... well I watched it and a lot of the normal stuff about tilting was repeated. Many of the questions I could answer myself (wich I think is a good sign). Did learn something about goal setting and tilt profile though ... but a little very small sentence he said, wich again is so logical and obvious, made me think on such a higher level about poker and also my life. That Why I wrote the next blogpost:

What if the bad days are actually the good days ?

"Uuuugh terrible day, after the football game yesterday I went to sleep @ 3 and woke up @ 10, felt very tired, did nothing, went to work, almost no work, did nothing ... came home still doing nothing ... better read my books in a few moments" And I went and did some productive stuff and that was it ... I went to sleep thinking I at least did something, I felt peacefull and slept in great.

This seems like self knowledge and honesty to myself just like I did all week but actually it is not. Even though I learned a lot this week I missed one of the biggest points and I didn't realize it untill an hour ago. I'm very sure many of the people reading this will read this and think ... "hey, this guy has a point" or maybe they will think .... "hey this is so obvious what an idiot for not pointing that out". If you are the last person and think I'm an idiot, than go ahead because I'm pretty sure you will not fully get what I'm trying to explain here.

After I woke up this morning and watched the jared tendler seminar I went to breakfast. I was thinking about what Jared said in the video and I started doubting if I actually did learn much. Suddenly I remembered something he said, I connected it to the whole week and it blew my mind. It was an 'Aha!' moment it changed my whole past week into a very succesfull week eventhough I was thinking before the video my week was a little dissapointing because I made so many errors.

What Jared said was about tilting in poker and improving in poker. He basically stated that to improve in poker or tilting you have to know your leaks. Sometimes you have sessions wich feel awesome and you're sure you played your A-game and sometimes you have sessions you play your C game. It's nothing to be embarrassed about it's about trying to play your a game as much as possible and even improving it.

After this he said that sometimes you may have the feeling you are not improving or things just feel bad. That does not mean you didn't improve as realizing you found new leaks actually means you are beginning to understand stuff on a higher level so you can see new leaks , you can analyze and fix them.

I believe making these kinds of profiles or stuff like tilt profiles are actually something we should also do with our lives ! Even though in this blog I seem to analyze myself it's not what I mean. Yes I say why my days are good or bad ... I may even give reasons but it's not like a fully understood them. I think improving is a game of 'why?'. Why did my day feel great ? Why wasn't it great ? Why was it great ? Why do I think it's great and am I missing leaks ?

"Uuuugh terrible day, after the football game yesterday I went to sleep @ 3 and woke up @ 10, felt very tired, did nothing, went to work, almost no work, did nothing ... came home still doing nothing ... better read my books in a few moments" And I went and did some productive stuff and that was it ... I went to sleep thinking I at least did something, I felt peacefull and slept in great.

But I shouldn't have slept yet. I had a terrible day ... wich is awesome. On a terrible day I probably had some major leaks and in stead of comforting myself by quickly doing something productive and go to sleep I could have found my enourmous leaks that day. It's because I realize that the day was awfull.
Why was my day terrible ?
Why wasn't I productive ?
Why didn't I put more effort in during the day ?
Why did I realize it was a terrible day and didn't change it as soon as I saw it ?
Why did I see this day in a negative sense as almost a wasted day while it was full of wonderfull mistakes wich could have made me learn so much more about myself?

As you can see life is just as poker and yesterday I was on a tilt but I didn't realize it untill now. I played my C-game yesterday, I had many leaks yesterday and there was a lot of room for improvement ! And even though I realized my day wasn't good I didn't change it but kept on playing my C-game. And even though there was so much to learn and so much positivity to get out of a terrible day I just focussed on the bad stuff.

So why are the bad days actually the good days ?
Because there is so much to learn from them we can learn something from ourselves so we can improve it in the future. But instead of doing this we just think it was a bad day and it may never happen again. And when we realize this, when we really deeply get it in our minds 'a bad day' doesn't exist anymore as they are opportunities for growth.

I just had a major paradigm shift wich made my realize again that what seems to be true ( the negativity of a bad day) may not always be true (opportunity for learning a lot ! )

I hope some of you understand what I mean
I would be nice to have some feedback on this topic actually. I really am interested in your point of view maybe you understood even more after reading this and you took it a step further. Maybe I am not seeing everything or could I be seeing something different ?